enabling – JustIce: you are not alone

Our stories are so similar, our names roles and coping abilities all depend on one thing. Ourselves.

Saving yourself through any impact of addiction is essential. The alternative is that enabling we have been chatting about recently.

I’ve been chatting to Ashlee lots lately. We meet incidentally on FB through her page Ice Diaries: beating the ICE epidemic together. We are both so excited to have found each other, and you can meet us soon at a new support group being established in Ballen. This support group will be the first of a few for our region – Ballarat/Ballen/Baccus-marsh, with plans to reach out to Werribbee soon. Follow us to keep in the loop.

Ashlee’s husband, Tom is 98 days drug free. He’s going from strength to strength and accessing all supports that suit him. If you or your partner are looking for support, look and try everything. Some people are fine with a home detox and then antidepressants, others respond well to counselling in a group setting or alone. Some love the successful 12 step programs internationally.

It matters not how you recover- it simply matters that you do.

Ashlee and Toms Story

Enabling …

I’ve been with my husband for almost 6 years, we have 2 beautiful kids together. For almost 3 of these years he has been an ice addict. I grew up with a step sister and brother as heroin addicts and knew the warning signs.

I look back at my husbands addiction and see how badly I enabled him.

What everyone needs to understand is an addict will do anything for their fix and that includes manipulating everyone around them. I am a very caring emotional person and I trust to easily and my husband constantly emotionally blackmailed me and used the fact I trusted easily to get what he wanted. Any excuse they can make to get money for their habit they will make, playing on the heart strings saying they have no food, they have no where to live and so on.

My husband lied to me many times about being off the drugs, including manipulating drug tests for me to allow him to see our kids or to come back home. All we want is our loved ones to get off the drugs and be happy again but unfortunately way to many of us help them in their addiction. If they call and say they need something don’t play into their hands. They made the decisions they have made and have to deal with the consequences no matter how hard it is for us to witness.

If we keep saving them and helping them, they will never face reality and clean their act up. I was manipulated into taking my husband food, buying him things, giving him money, believing the lies he told me. When he was disapearing for days at a time and not coming home, I would hear the same 4 excuses over and over again, but yet I still fell for them everytime … why? Because deep inside we don’t want the truth to be our reality. The harsh reality is they are an addict, you can’t trust a word they say as all they care about is their drugs.

They are no longer our loved one, they are an addict and the sooner we come to terms with that the sooner we can actually help them instead of enabling them.

Don’t jump just because they say jump, they have to do it on their own. You can’t force an addict to get help, they need to make that decision themselves otherwise it is a waste of time.

I enabled my husband to continue his addiction, seeing the signs and ignoring them, taking him places he needed to go, buying him things he needed, allowing him to affect our children and I more and more everyday.

Falling for the “I love you and I promise I will do the right thing from now on.” They are just telling you what they know you want to hear, so they can “have their cake and eat it too”. Taking advantage of the love we have for them, manipulating every situation they can to benefit them. The harsh reality is we are helping them kill themselves and we need to stop.

We need to say “No” and respect ourselves enough not to be used like that. Enabling them basically gives them a free ticket to live a comfortable life as an addict. They need to hit their rock bottom, they need to have reality hit them in the face enough to make them want to change. If we keep making it easy for them, why would they want to change? We need to stand up for ourselves and not let them affect our lives anymore and as hard as it is we have to let go.

Let them go, tell them when they are ready to get professional help you are there but until then you can’t have them destroying your life. Making that decision to stop enabling them is hard and realizing you have played a part in keeping their addiction going is heartbreaking but if you want them to get better then you need to get tough and hope for the best. No more playing into their hand, demanding respect and honesty and making it clear you will not help them anymore until they agree to get professional help to get off the drugs. Otherwise they are only going to drag you right down with them into the hell that is addiction.

Written by Ashlee: wife, a mother, a lover, another person starting her own recovery.

Ashlee and Tom are writing a memoir and recording their journey to share and inspire others. I’m looking forward to reading it, and when it’s released, we’ll make certian you’re the first to know.

Tom you’re looking amazing, you’re doing amazing- cause you are amazing.